The latest fusion of holiday and sport offers the opportunity to get fit in tropical heat, help out disadvantaged Indian youngsters, and act as a talent scout for your local soccer team.

Based at Sportz Village in Bangalore, southern India, you will be involved in a community project for local children over the April/May school holidays, working alongside trained Indian coaches who have played football at national or state level, as well as hockey, volleyball, basketball and athletics.

"A lot of local schools don't have the resources to offer sports," says Sara Horner of volunteer travel specialist i-to-i. "This is a chance for people to play something they enjoy and put something back into the game. We've already had interest from someone who coached a successful club in the lower English leagues."

You don't need coaching qualifications; simply a keen interest and demonstrable abilities in one of the sports. For £695 (excluding flights), the four-week trip includes access to an online facility that lets you draw up your own coaching itinerary.

i-to-i hopes the Bangalore coaching trip, which follows on from similar recent projects including basketball in Ghana, Ecuador and Tanzania, swimming in Thailand and football in Costa Rica, will attract more men, who make up only 30% of its volunteers.

Who knows, it may also help to find a future Indian superstar for the UK.

Woolacombe Bay Hotel is offering a two-for-one package until March 23. Between Sunday and Thursday, the twin-share price of £92pp for two nights - the minimum length of stay - includes B&B, four-course dinner and use of the sports facilities. Alternatively, PGL Travel's Barton Hall centre in south Devon has a four-night Family Active break, starting March 21, for £210pp full-board (two children stay free with each adult), including abseiling, quad bikes and dry-slope skiing.

Hooked on hiking overseas but hate the idea of leaving your darling dog in kennels? Headwater has come up with new tactics to ramble in France with man's best friend.

Taking advantage of the pet passport scheme, which removed the obligatory six months' quarantine, it has adapted walking holidays in the Haut Jura region, Dordogne, and spectacular Queyras National Park close to the Italian border.

New bookings, including details of the dog's breed, size and age, are phoned ahead to consenting hotels. "It's up to the individual hotelier whether the dog sleeps in your room or elsewhere," says Headwater's Rachel Kirkaldy.

Although you will have responsibility for the dog's nosh, "you don't have to worry about carrying heavy cans on your walk", says Rachel. "We move the bags for you each day."

For £448, sir or madam gets eight nights' half board in two-star accommodation with car ferry crossing and all walking notes, maps etc between June 15-29 (based on two sharing). The cost of the dog is an additional £79. This covers the crossing, all organisation and prior permission and stays at hotels (but not food).

Like to burn off a few calories while you're on safari? Outposts has simplified your task with a list of the coolest pools in the south and east African bush.

The River Club in Zambia lets you churn up the lengths at sunset while looking across the Zambezi and listening to grunting hippos. Alternatively, the high-level horizon pool at Elsa's Kopje in Kenya, gazes out across a game-filled plain with the Nyambeni Mountains to the left and George Adamson's old camp below.

Or, if you if you wish to combine your exercise with history and scenery, Fugitives' Drift Lodge in South Africa has epic views across the Buffalo River Gorge to sphinx-shaped Isandlwana hill -where the Zulu army won a famous victory over the British in 1879.

Perhaps the world's strangest holiday promotion: to celebrate the 210th anniversary - bicentenaries are so last millennium - of Lithuania's oldest and most famous spa resort, Baltic Holidays is offering free colonic irrigation to anyone taking a trip to Druskininkai.

Call us cynical, but we fear it's unlikely to prove as attractive as free champagne or Nectar points, particularly when each flush costs just £1.50.